Japanese Plan to Defend the Home Islands

[unmerged(10591)]

Simply put what were the exact plans?

On a History Channel special a week ago (Secret Weapons of the Japanese Airforce) it was mentioned that the Japanese were training many civilians in rifle and gernade usage along with constructing underground factories and jet aircraft for a massive raid when the American forces approached, is this true?

 

[Intosh]

Hi,

Don't know what exactly were their original plans but I suspected it will the same that on the Marianne's islands, on Iwo Jima or on Okinawa...

Fortify, fortify and fortify to resist until the last cartridge and then make with the last munitions and weapons banzaï attacks.

Of course, before making banzaï sucidal charges, the soldiers will forced to suicide or killed themselves all non-combattants who were with them : wounded soldiers and civilians...

Probably the moutains and forrests of Japan will provided excellent terrain for guerilla operations and this kind of war could last very long time.

Also, every japanese will be a menace for americans soldiers, always ready to throw themselves with a grenade under a tank or a jeep...

I don't know if the japanese have the ressources and supplies left to build underground factories and build modern equipements as the jet fighters. They will probably multiply the plane, boat and others kamikaze...

An american invasion of Japan will be very bloody, it will become a kind of rivality :

who will be the first to surrender with the heavy losses, he will take...

Don't remember exactly the body count of the last battles of the Pacific but the losses where extreme...

Bye,

 

[unmerged(10591)]

Thanks for the opinon, sounds about what I thought, the idea of a massive jet force was alittle exagerated I think.

 

[Aetius]

Most of the Japanese military losses were by starvation, suicide wasn't the primary cause.

 

[Intosh]

Originally posted by Aetius
Most of the Japanese military losses were by starvation, suicide wasn't the primary cause.

I'm sorry, I don't understand your remark.

Majority of japanese military losses were the people killed in action.

In the deep caverns where the japanese dug themselves in Iwo Jima or Okinawa, the wounded have minimal medical aid, but I read nowhere that they died of starvation, the campaign on this island didn't last very long, two months maybe for Okinawa...

The suicide were common among the non-combatants, when american forces approached a village on the Marianne islands, populated by japanese colonists. Entire families throw themselves from the cliff.

Before making the famous banzaï suicide attacks, all the soldiers that couln't participated in the charge suicided themselves or were killed by their comrades.

Bye,

 

[Aetius]

Originally posted by Intosh
Majority of japanese military losses were the people killed in action.

In the deep caverns where the japanese dug themselves in Iwo Jima or Okinawa, the wounded have minimal medical aid, but I read nowhere that they died of starvation, the campaign on this island didn't last very long, two months maybe for Okinawa...

The suicide were common among the non-combatants, when american forces approached a village on the Marianne islands, populated by japanese colonists. Entire families throw themselves from the cliff.

Before making the famous banzaï suicide attacks, all the soldiers that couln't participated in the charge suicided themselves or were killed by their comrades.

I mean of the total losses. There were lots of islands in the Pacific that Japanese controlled until the end of the war. The US strategy was based on isolating and bombing most of the islands, especially the well defended islands, and taking a few strategic ones. The isolated troops slowly starved to death. Even on islands where combat occured starvation was a very common cause of death e.g. Guadalcanal or Papau New Guinea, even if the combat losses were the leading cause.
AFAIK the bulk of the Japanese troops in the Pacific were not engaged in direct combat with allied forces, but stuck in these garrisons, like at Truk where something like 40 000 troops just sat being bombed and starved to death to the end of the war.

 

[LordStark]

The plan that is being refered to was hatched by the Army general staff and did not have the support of most of the elder statesmen, the civilian members of the cabinent, or the Imperial Household(including the Emperor).

It was never believed that the Home Islands could actually be protected from the brunt of a full Allied assualt. Even the most optimistic reports summited by the general staff suggested the primary goal of armed resistence was to inflict so many casualties on the US invasion army that Washington would accept a conditional, rather than a unconditional, surrender.

 

[Aetius]

Originally posted by LordStark
Even the most optimistic reports summited by the general staff suggested the primary goal of armed resistence was to inflict so many casualties on the US invasion army that Washington would accept a conditional, rather than a unconditional, surrender.

Which pretty much sounds like their original plan for defending the Pacific

 

[LordStark]

Originally posted by Aetius
Which pretty much sounds like their original plan for defending the Pacific

Yes. The Japanese government did not believe it could win any war against the United States. At best, even the hawks predicted a stalemate. Interestingly enough, this contributes to the case of those who argue Tokyo never wanted the Pacific War.

 

[Aetius]

Originally posted by LordStark
Yes. The Japanese government did not believe it could win any war against the United States. At best, even the hawks predicted a stalemate. Interestingly enough, this contributes to the case of those who argue Tokyo never wanted the Pacific War.

Which sort of assumes that Tokyo had any kind of self-control at this point

 

[LordStark]

Originally posted by Aetius
Which sort of assumes that Tokyo had any kind of self-control at this point

To be blunt, it did. Japan was not a dictatorship, despite some theories suggesting otherwise. But this is a seperate issue. The real issue at hand is whether or not the government could have halted the war if it wanted to, or, worded another way, was the war "inevitable" given Japanese strategy in the Pacific.

I believe it was not inevitable, not by any means. Due to complelicated circumstances I can go into greater detail about if you so wish, Tokyo set out series of deadlines in US-Japanese negotiations for peace just prior to Pearl Harbour. One after another these deadlines were missed as Japanese envoys in Washington proved unable to come to hard agreements with the Roosevelt administration. The primary problem was both Japanese and American recalcitrance. Japan demanded an end to the oil embargo and the US simply would not agree to its cessestion until Japanese troops withdrew from Indochina and China proper. Japan had been at war in China since 1937 and had lost thousands of soldiers and spent millions of yen trying to achieve its aims. The China theatre was a key matter of national security at this point and the Army was reluctant to pull out until Japan had a hard agreement with the Chinese government. Indochina was connected to the China theatre in that the Nationalist regime was being supplied by the US through the region. The US for its part would not agree to a Japanese presence in China and Indochina as a part of its long standing commitment to the Nationalist regime. Just a few days before Pearl Harbour, the last deadline was missed and the military determined its oil supplies had reached critically low levels. In a matter of months Japan would have been completly crippled by the oil embargo. The Navy decided to act launched operation Z , or the attack on Pearl Harbour.

Sorry to bore you, but I had to get that out

 

[unmerged(9422)]

Originally posted by LordStark

Sorry to bore you, but I had to get that out

No, no.. It was quite an interesting and informative post, I think. Thanks for the read, and good work

I believe the Minister of Navy said during 1941 that Japan Navy's oil supplies could not survive through the next year. I remember you were speaking about the oil problems, so I contributed

 

[Tim O]

How much industrial capacity did Japan have left in '45? surely not enough to put up resistence for months.

 

[Aetius]

Originally posted by Timothy Ortiz
How much industrial capacity did Japan have left in '45? surely not enough to put up resistence for months.

Wasn't really the industrial capacity that was the bottleneck, the lack of strategic resources was what was really crippling them. Not that the industry was much better, but a lot of it had been moved out to the countryside.

 

[unmerged(11486)]

The Japanese created 'Home Defense Battalions.' These would be composed of civilians taken off the street, and armed with whatever guns could be found. A large number of them were even armed with spears, knives, and ubiquitous samurai swords (not really, but hey).

An invasion would probably have cost 500,000 American lives, and at least 5 million Japanese. It's a good thing the bombs were dropped.

Steele

 

[Baron Jukaga]

It would of been horrible. US plans called for massive chemical weapons use. Grenades, shells and bombs were manufactured. Most likely Operation Olympic would of been the genocide of the Japanese race. It's funny in a sick way that the Japanese can thank their existence to having been nuked.

 

[unmerged(10962)]

As detailed in "Downfall..." by R. Frank

They DID adjust tactics based on experience in Pacific.

They could not meet the US on the beaches - preparatory bombardment was too heavy. They could not allow Americans to establish a beachead - once ashore, they couldn't be pushed back.
so for Kyushu (Olympic), they had amassed over 600,000 troops - far more than US identified - with the aim to make it THE battle. This battle would be an all or nothing fight, with the main plan to build up defenses on the expected invasion areas (they had most of them well identified, and were building defenses), put counterattack divisions close to those areas (but away from beaches), and would mount aggressive counterattacks by land, sea, undersea, and air.

Read Downfall for more.

tom

 

[Intosh]

Originally posted by scout1026
They DID adjust tactics based on experience in Pacific.

They could not meet the US on the beaches - preparatory bombardment was too heavy. They could not allow Americans to establish a beachead - once ashore, they couldn't be pushed back.
so for Kyushu (Olympic), they had amassed over 600,000 troops - far more than US identified - with the aim to make it THE battle.

This explanation doesn't satisfied me.

How the japanese could adapt their tactics from experience from battlefield.

Because all the Japanese fighting on Tarawa, on the Mariannes islands, on Iwo-Jima, or Okinawa, all of them were killed or taken POW. No high level officer, no papers or documentation could escape from these islands.

Tokyo never know how many americans soldiers were killed or how many american ships were damaged. And the official propaganda always speak of huge americans losses, and these official informations were the only ones available, and probably become the "truth", the japanese believed even on high levels.

So how japanase headquarters officers could adapt tactics on experience from the battlefield, because nobody survived from the battlefield.

Contrary to the americans who learn from the bloody experience on battlefield how to fight japanese and they learn one thing, you have to kill them all.

So the 600 000 japanses soldiers on Kyushu will be slaughered by any available means of destruction, alongside hundreds of thousands of civilians.

I will not be a battle, it will a slaughter...

 

[unmerged(8195)]

Originally posted by Intosh
the campaign on this island didn't last very long, two months maybe for Okinawa...

Roughly 96 days for Okinawa.

 

[unmerged(9422)]

The Battle in the Home Islands would have been a terrible battle. Many many people would have died on both sides. I believe a large number of kamikaze and kaiten were planned for usage. A huge battle.


Japanese defense plans included

Thousands of Kamikaze and Kaiten were to be used against the approaching enemy forces. The defending forces would hide in bunkers and tunnels near the coast, probably such as in Iwo Jima and some other battles, then attack enemies after the landing. The Kamikaze and Kaiten were probably planned to attack the enemy ships in masses before the landing. American plans were to start at Kyushu. The defense would continue this way, through Japan, until Americans were defeated or Japanese were defeated.


America plan of attack

The Americans planned to begin at Kyushu. A huge use bombs and also of chemical weapons were planned as well. A meeting was had by American leaders, and the documents of their meetings show their plans for the chemical weapons. There were about fifty urban and industrial targets for the chemical weapons. Tokyo was the main target, and Kyoto, Osaka and some others were other targets. They estimated about five million people would be killed in those cities by the chemical weapons. About 15 days before the landings at Kyushu, Kyushu would be heavily bombarded with bombs and poison gas.

The invasion of Kyushu was scheduled to be in November, 1945. It was called "Operation Olympic". If all went well for the Americans, Kyushu would be captured, and in March, 1946, "Operation Coronet" would be carried out. This was the invasion of Tokyo and Honshu. The Japanese defense strategy of Honshu would probably be similar to at Kyushu. But, Operation Coronet would be on a larger scale, with more men on both sides.

Millions of people would have died on both sides. Even though the atomic bombs ended the war with less casualties than this and also faster, they were also not good. The war should have ended sooner, and peace should have begun to be negotiated earlier in 1945 when Japan began to attempt to make peace. I think a conclusion was possible to have been made that way. Too bad it didn't..